AUT INVENIAM VIAM AUT FACIAM

Spend My Life Cleaning? Gimme the Asperger’s Instead

This week officially has ended at 10:01 pm Pacific Time, Wednesday, it was that lame. It’s cold outside, and there are a lot of distractions inside. (Being a man, not least of all… –Sorry. Not finishing that. We should get to know one another better before I make with the ick.) I got a video game because I’m Fourteen Forever, afraid of humans, and am seized by an engrossing compulsion to complete a game once I begin it, as with anything I begin.

In fact, I still think it would be only fair — no more, no less, and enjoyed by no one, assuredly — that, should I hang out with a certain friend, we have sex until mutual satisfaction is attained. Why? We only tried doing it once, and were interrupted fifteen times by as many people before it was agreed (with one abstention) we had the wrong time and place. Wrong time? Two am. Wrong place? A bedroom.

Nevermind that this person is now married, has at least one kid, etc. The fact remains that I have issues. And my issues are my pathologies.

Speaking of which, thus ends the Week In Review that was never to be. I thought it clever, only moments ago, to name a topic and then discuss something completely irrelevant immediately and directly, instead of meandering into non sequitur, as I cannot keep myself from doing.

And now? I’m not amused.

And Now Here’s Something We Hope You’ll Really Like!

I hate cleanliness. Every office I’ve worked in, desk I’ve sat at, apartment I’ve lived in, etc, has always been not-unclean, but certainly messy. Why? Because I don’t think it wise to routinely gather the things one is interested in/using/reading/so forth, and hide them.

But that’s a reason. Regarding my attitude toward Clean, there was emotion long before reason; though my post hoc reasons are true enough, they still only gild the lily (a phrase one cannot use correctly because it is a misquote, and so refers to nothing).

Here it is, doc: Like most lifelong issues, it seems like I was born feeling this way. But the truth is probably this: Every two weeks the family was made to clean the house according to my then-mother’s specifications. My brothers — one a year older, the other seven younger — and I gladly would have undergone pointless and painful oral surgery to get out of this ritual. My Dad never had nor would contradict my then-mother, nor argue with her, so I am unaware of what kind and degree of torment he would have preferred.

Best of all, cleaning day would be declared, on a god damned Saturday, as always, which meant the weekend was flushed. The plans each person was planning on fulfilling that day had to be broken. Sunday means church. …I don’t know if it’s a Catholic thing, but I don’t know anyone who wants to do much of anything on Sundays after Mass. Maybe this feeling is created by the desire of the Catholic to Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep It Holy. Dunno. But I do know harnessing Catholic Guilt for electricity would produce more energy than a fusion reactor, not counting the earth-obliterating explosion.

Think of how perfectly safe fission-derived energy is (it’s sarcasm Japan. Love managa. Know your tech leads the world. Hope a moment’s praise earns me a SexBot. Because Japan? We know you have them. PS: What’s the deal with your entertainment media including as much freaking rape as US media does violence?).

The sun, to be quick about it, fuses hydrogen into helium. Basically. The fusing of two or more particles into a single, new particle, that is slightly less massive than the constituent particles means the mass lost is the energy created by the reaction. And when we consider the equation everyone knows but few understand (E = m(c squared)), a little matter goes a long way. And the mind-numbing amount of matter the sun has to work with literally makes the world go ’round.

WHAT’S ALL THIS, THEN?

Back to it. So on a goddam Saturday five people cleaned every goddam inch of their three-story house until my then-mom was satisfied.

And what does a perfectly clean home look like? Like no one lives in the goddam thing.

What does it smell like? The faux-lemon scent characteristic of so many household poisons.

Which reminds me to add that, not only were all signs of life hidden as though pornographic, but a ridiculous effort was made to fucking sterilize every surface.

I was in my early teens when I first asked the woman if she thought she might want to see someone because she obviously had a compulsive disorder, which I diagnosed before OCD was big. And when a panic attack felt like a heart attack — exactly — when I was 18, I decided not to be crazy, as Crazy did. And so I function as though I do not have generalized anxiety disorder thanks to klonopin and effexor daily, and then a sensible dinner.

To me it was idiocy to stow away the PlayStation when the fucking thing would be back out as soon as the woman’s delusions were officially satisfied.

And then all the remotes popped back where they had been like a rubber band snapping back into its usual shape (no no — not at all like that, really, and I’m sorry). Soon the magazines were back where people could easily pick them up and fucking read them. A magazine is quite useless if placed where it cannot be read, since it conveys information primarily just as this blog: written American-English.

The final insult of the day was your inability to fit under your bed’s covers because your bedding had been changed. The sheets and blanket had been individually tucked into the corners where your feet belong. And so my last act of the day always was to angrily kick the covers loose , and ultimately yank them free. I then swore and fumed with angry regret for having wasted so much of my life doing a thing I hated to please an irrational person.

Eventually my thoughts would turn to the hope that my parents could somehow, as they did perhaps once a year, be so taken by a certain matter as to forget the time and allow us to miss Mass. Sometimes hope is all you have. And what you have is worse than nothing. Were I hopeless I would have accepted Sunday’s eventualities. As it was, I hoped for one single day I could fucking sleep in.

AHEM!

It’s insane to make a house immaculate. Why? Because making it that way is thirsty work, and a glass of soda, when finished and placed in the sink, ruins everything! As illustrated above, the moment one is done cleaning, everything it was so fucking important to put away is taken right the fuck back out.

To clean is to erase proof of life. An organized space has a place you can misplace all your things in. Things are put “away.” Not “near.” The terminology of organization itself belies its lunacy.

Also, I’m not idiot enough to have ever made a bed since I started high school. I was spared the task because I would question the Crazy thusly on the matter, each time I was to make my bed:

Please! Who am I making my bed look “presentable” for this particular Tuesday? And what if Aunt Z happened to glance into my room? Is the sight of an unmade bed somehow offensive to someone somewhere? Then if it bothers you, while every other person is fine with it as is, shouldn’t you make the thing? Yeah, I never said I wasn’t going to obey your nonsense, but I need you to understand that it is, in fact, nonsense! That this is a job not for a mere man, but for Sisyphus?

I swear I’ll make you admit it one of these days! So now I’ll tidy it up and later we won’t discuss the fact that you re-make the damn thing at some point!

She stopped making me make my bed because she was, after years of interrogation, on the verge of analyzing her own behavior, and she knew it was pointless.

I questioned everyone except my Dad like this. My Dad worked Always, and didn’t deserve botheration. Especially since he didn’t cause the family any unless he was insisting we obey Crazy.

The shrinks I’ve seen for my meds that knew me best each told me at one point I had/have Asperger’s, which is the autism designed around your busy lifestyle. (Now in menthol.)

Why? I have always read constantly, and must read anything with words within reach. I have always read every single thing I have ever seen. In hindsight it’s obvious I was and am hyperlexic. (My oddity, my word-variant.) I don’t know if this is part of hyperlexia, but I have always perfectly understood grammar. I never had to pay attention to an English class until… Well, I never wanted to until college.

Also, I have kept one leg in constant motion my entire life. Whether corking a 540 on skates or turning to face someone, I rotate counterclockwise. I always have, and always will, need to occassionally press on the area between my eyes. I saw doctors for years and couldn’t say why, nor can I now. Once the need is apparent, I can delay the necessary action if I choose to for no good reason. But eventually I will suffer a complete mental collapse, I’m sure, should the action ever be needed and impossible to perform.

That last bit proves my doctor was a hack. The behavior is stereotyped… Probably more accurately characterized as stimming. You get autism from that and that alone.

Also, my conversations are a dialogue only if my current interest is discussed. Otherwise I contribute info on my topic to unrelated conversation.

I am not annoyed by a lack of order, though. Instead, I am enraged by things that lack sense, reason, purpose, thought, so forth. The products of disordered thinking, I suppose, could be considered my Kryptonite.

I’ve often stated that only autists are naturally inclined to think logically, and not to operate according to emotion.

Welcome to Vulcan, bitches.

The good thing about Asperger’s, other than knowing what I wanted to do with my life all my life (play with words) is that one is intelligent enough to observe and convincingly mimic behaviors and interactions that are commonplace but poorly understood. Thanks in no small part to my Dad, eg, I not only recognize sarcasm, but used it incessantly for years. With sexy results.

And so, doc, we reach the end of the shrubbery maze: The Asperger’s, aka my personality, made me detest every second I spent performing acts that would almost immediately be undone. I was forced to behave in a manner I couldn’t make sense of.

Which has resulted in me behaving just as I would had Saturday Torture not been a thing at my house.

Still, one doesn’t spend that much time making things that goddam clean without making friends of horror and moral terror.